Risk & Crisis Management in Tourism Sector:
Recovery from Crisis
in the OIC Member Countries
12
4. Case Studies
A series of eight case studies were conducted on countries which have encountered challenges to
their tourism sectors in recent years. The case studies were carried out by desk research or by desk
and field research and included four OIC Member States (Indonesia, Turkey, Tunisia, The Gambia),
and four non-OIC countries (South Africa, the United Kingdom, Thailand, Sri Lanka). An outline of
the principal successful responses taken by the various countries is given below, grouped under the
headings of pre-risk and crisis management, market responses, destination responses, and critical
success factors.
Pre-risk and Crisis Management
 Creating a tourism-specific crisis management plan (by the tourism authorities) which
integrates with the national-level disaster preparedness planning.
 Enterprise-specific risk awareness and crisis management planning.
 Establishing good relations with media and travel trade in order to ensure good support
in the event of a crisis.
 Good communications and relations between stakeholders, e.g. horizontal
communications between industry members and vertical communications between
government and industry.
Market-oriented Responses
 Setting up a centralised hotline in the immediate aftermath of a crisis to answer media/
trade / tourist enquiries. The most successful users of this tactic gave consistent and
accurate messages, since attempts to gloss over the truth are quickly uncovered by
journalists and individual tourists.
 Familiarisation trips for journalists, bloggers and tour operators.
 Immediate refunds for people who wished to cancel their visit in the light of the crisis;
offers of price reductions (for potential travellers) or accommodation upgrades (for
people already booked or in-country).
 Building the destination’s image through sponsorship; seeking and promoting ‘good
news’ or unusual stories; co-creation of destination image through visitor contributions,
especially through social media; funding bloggers to write about the country; engaging
PR agencies.
 Market diversification, especially appealing to less sensitive markets, for instance
regional markets which are more likely to understand the situation better, and/or other
Islamic countries by crisis-afflicted Islamic countries.
 Appeals to the resident population or diaspora to holiday in-country.
 Increased budget for marketing, sometimes linked to a ‘Visit [name of country] Year’ or
a specific theme.
 In the mid to longer term, a thorough understanding of market trends was felt to ensure
a speedier and more appropriate response to crisis.